the impact of ethics courses on aounting majors…€¦ · the impact of ethics courses on aounting...

SBAJ: Vol. 9 Num. 2, 2009 Pages 70 - 88

THE IMPACT OF ETHICS COURSES ON ACCOUNTING MAJORS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS BUSINESS ETHICS

Hema Rao, State University of New York at Oswego

Barry A. Friedman, State University of New York at Oswego

Pamela L. Cox, State University of New York at Oswego

ABSTRACT

Efforts to improve ethics education of accounting students have increased, but the impact of college ethics courses on attitudes towards business ethics of accounting students have not been determined. The purpose of this research is to measure and compare the business ethics attitudes of accounting students who have taken ethics courses, with other junior and senior business students who have not taken similar courses. Measuring the differences in responses of accounting students and other business students indicate incremental learning from prior ethics courses. Data are collected using the Attitudes Towards Business Ethics Questionnaire (ATBEQ).

Rao: The Impact of Ethics Courses …… 71

INTRODUCTION

Accounting ethical scandals such as Enron, WorldCom, Sunbeam, Tyco, and Rite Aid have led to discussions about the impact of business ethics education and training. College level business ethics courses address knowledge and skills that accounting professionals need to demonstrate ethics based reasoning, judgment to resolve ethical dilemmas in their business dealings. The Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and The National Association of the Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) are requiring the addition of business ethics courses to accounting curricula to achieve this objective.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) adopted a 150 credit hours requirement for membership and to sit for the Certified Public Accounting (CPA) exam. In one of the position papers on accounting education it made the following statement: “A sense of responsibility to society and to one’s own profession should be acquired very early in the educational process and can begin with the nurturing of moral and ethical value.” (AICPA, 1: 10). Other stakeholders of accounting education agree with this statement (Bean & Bernardi, 2007).

LITERATURE REVIEW Views on Teaching Ethics in the Classroom Teaching ethics within business school curricula has two opposing views. One view suggests that it is possible to teach ethics in the classroom and the second holds that it is not possible to do so at this stage, because by then one is either ethical or not. These contradictory views prevail among academics, accounting professionals and even students (Macfarlane, 1995; Poneman, 1993; Armstrong, 1993b; Bernardi& Bean, 2006; Gundersen et.al, 2008). Some researchers cite formal ethics education in other professions, like law (Macfarlan, 1995) medicine (Pellegrino & McElninney, 1982) and dentistry (Bebeau, 1994) that promote high levels of ethical awareness and reasoning Consequently, most accounting academics and


practitioners agree that ethics should become a more significant part of the accounting curricula.

Public accounting firms suggest the use of and provide ethics videos, cases, movies and other devices (ethics teaching interventions) to professors to create business ethics awareness among accounting students. Repeated exposures to the ethical issues depicted in these materials are expected to indoctrinate students in ethical reasoning leading to ethics based decisions. Surveys administered to students after viewing such materials provide measures of ethics awareness acquired by them. Accounting professors have emulated several teaching techniques of their peers in their ethics interventions. A majority of such exercises measure moral development (cognitive acts of identifying moral issues and thinking them through prior to deciding on an ethically sensitive course of action) after conducting an ethical intervention in the class. A brief discussion of the commonly cited studies follows. Poneman & Glazer (1990) examine accounting students’ ethical reasoning using Defining Issues Test (DIT) scores developed by Rest (1986). They found that only accounting seniors progressed to levels of ethical reasoning measured by DIT P scores published by Rest (1986). The subjects of their study were students and alumni in public accounting practice from a liberal college offering an undergraduate accounting degree and from a second AACSB accredited school granting accounting degrees. They conclude that moral development of these students may be affected by educational processes that inhibit students’ abilities to develop an increasing sense of ethics, integrity or moral beliefs during the college years. Jeffrey (1993) uses DIT scores and reports that accounting majors tended to have higher cognitive moral development if they attended a liberal arts school. Armstrong et. al. (2003) uses Thorne’s (1998) model for ethical decision making, to suggest that if accounting educators can find ways to enhance ethical motivation, they can induce their accounting students to choose and act on decision alternatives that were more ethical. Thorne’s model (1998) combines moral development and virtue. She believes that an interaction of these two components aid accounting students and professionals to achieve higher levels of moral reasoning and also motivate them to act ethically.


Classroom Ethical Interventions Thorne (1998) combined James Rest’s Four-Component Model of ethical behavior with the prescriptive idea of ethics theory. It is believed that the basic idea behind Rest’s four processes may lead to “inner psychological processes” that “together give rise to outwardly observable behavior” (Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau, & Thomas, 1999: 101). These inner processes touch upon the following moral characteristics that would influence an individual’s moral actions by:

1. Enhancing sensitivity to the moral issues in a dilemma, thinking about alternative actions that may be taken and weighing effects of such actions on various parties involved.

2. Using moral judgment to take ethically justified actions. 3. Creating commitment to valuing moral values, taking moral actions and

accepting personal responsibility for the morally motivated results. 4. Developing the courage, persistence to achieve moral goals by

overcoming personal fatigue and temptation. Studies in Enhancing Moral Sensitivity Fulmer and Cargile (1987) found that accounting students who had been exposed to the AICPA’s Code of Professional Conduct recognized ethical issues in the “ethical scenarios” used by them more often than the other business students. However, they found that their actions did not differ from those of the business students. This disparity between ethical awareness and ethical actions is evident by ethical lapses of the auditors of Arthur Andersen who failed to protect the public from the fraud perpetrated by Enron. Armstrong (1993b) found that the DIT “P” scores of students who were exposed to ethics and professionalism courses were statistically different from similar scores of students in intermediate

accounting. Rest’s Defining Issues Test (DIT) results in a “P” score which measures the percentage of time. Respondents utilize stage 5 or 6 reasoning (“principled” reasoning) in choosing solutions to given scenarios. Armstrong also found that the interactive effect of taking ethics and professionalism courses with prior classes in ethics seemed to be effective in predicting what she refers to as “moral-reasoning maturation”.


Prescriptive Reasoning in Ethical Decisions Another aspect of teaching ethics is prescriptive reasoning that leads to ethical judgment. Studies in this area include studies in the psychology of moral development, classical philosophical theories, case analyses, codes of conduct, and virtue. Normative ethics (what one should do) and descriptive ethics (how people make moral decisions) are the broad categories. Normative studies investigate the good, bad, right, and wrong of issues which have alternative answers. An example of such studies is the Rest (1986) study cited in this paper. Text books in accounting ethics (Mintz, 1992; Epstein & Spalding, 1993) use classical normative ethical theories that can be applied to ethics in accounting. Some of these theories include egoism (exemplified by Adam Smith’s assumption that people act in their own self interest), utilitarianism (discussions of cost/benefit issues in various topics and the belief that projects with lower costs than benefits are acceptable leading to the belief that ends justify means) and deontology (focuses on rights and duties and accounting principles that emphasize the right way to do things irrespective outcomes, for example matching concept). Students may encounter these theories in their courses without being aware of their import. Langenderfer & Rockness (1989) propose that ethics case studies be used throughout the accounting curriculum. They suggest an eight step model to be used as an analytical model. They also recommend courses in ethics. Some suggest teaching students about virtue which may allow one to achieve excellence in one’s profession. Mintz (1996) gives a case study which he includes virtue considerations into an introductory financial accounting course. Guidelines are provided to assess if the students are successfully learning about virtue. Attitudes Towards Business Ethics Questionnaire (ABTEQ) The Attitude Toward Business Ethics Questionnaire (ABTEQ) is used to measure ethics attitudes of students that either received or did not receive ethics training. The ATBEQ was first developed by Neumann & Reichel (1987), based on the Stevens (1979) "values clarification exercises." Preble & Reichel (1988) used the ABTEQ to compare United


States and Israeli management students. They found that United States and Israeli students differed with respect to several ABTEQ items. For example, relative to the Israeli students, the U.S. students tended to disagree more with the statement that "the only moral of business is making money." Small (1992) compared Western Australian students with U.S. and Israeli students using the ABTEQ, but found few meaningful differences.

Moore & Radoff (1996) used the ABTEQ to compare South African Students with the previous samples of U.S., Israeli and Australian students collected by Prebl & Reichel (1988) and Small (1992). They found that the South African and Israeli students differed on a number of items. For example, compared to Israeli students, South African students do not agree that the “only morale of business is making money.” Cox & Friedman (2009) used the ABTEQ to compare United States, Singaporean, and Mexican students’ attitudes towards business ethics.

Mexican, Singaporean, and U.S. students’ responses differed significantly on 14 of the ABTEQ items. Compared to the Mexican and Singaporean students, the United States students mean responses were lower on 11 of the 14 items. For example, U.S. students’ agreement with the statement “The only moral of business is making money” was significantly lower than the Mexican and Singaporean students. Cox, Friedman, & Edwards (2009) used the ABTEQ to measure the effect of using the film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room on students’ attitudes towards business ethics. Significant differences emerged between the experimental group (students who viewed the film) and the control group. However, rather than developing a more positive attitude towards the importance of ethical behavior in the workplace, students’ attitudes were less idealistic and more cynical after the teaching intervention. For example, the experimental group students reported that business was less moralistic than the control group, that following the law is no guarantee that one will be morally sound, and that business people do not naturally act according to moral principles. Moore & Radloff (1996) removed five items from the questionnaire based on factor analysis results. Cox, Friedman, & Edwards (2009) removed an additional three items based on pretesting with business


undergraduate students. The resultant questionnaire consisted of 22 items, and was used in this study.

METHOD Accounting students enrolled in an auditing course (AU)

received ethics courses prior to administration of the ATBEQ (i.e. experimental group). Senior and junior business students in an organizational behavior (OB) course did not take any ethics courses prior to the questionnaire administration (i.e. control group). The questionnaire was administered within the first two weeks of the semester which excluded any “noise” by exposing Accounting students to professional ethics auditing issues. Hypothesis It is anticipated that the Accounting students (AU) will have more positive attitudes towards business ethics than OB students due to the prior ethics courses taken by them. Exposure to ethics courses will increase Accounting students´ awareness of ethical issues and the importance of ethics in the workplace. It is hypothesized that Accounting students who have taken ethics courses will have significantly different attitudes towards business ethics than OB students who have not taken such courses. Sample The student sample (N= 58) for this study consists of senior Accounting students enrolled in an auditing class (N =29) and OB students (N = 29) enrolled in a northeastern public four year college. Accounting students enrolled in the auditing course had taken two prior courses in ethics. The first course is in Classical Ethics in which students are instructed in Virtue and Command Ethics, Deontology and Utilitarianism in addition to other concepts. A second course entitled Business Ethics examines the issues at the intersection of business and ethics from a philosophical perspective. The sample was 55% male and 43% female. Seventy-seven (77%) of the students were between the ages of 21-25. Accounting and OB students did not differ with respect to age (χ2 = 3.54, p = .31) or gender (χ2 = 2.17, p = .33).


Results The ATBEQ consists of 22 items that use five point Likert rating scales (1= “strongly disagree”, 2= “disagree”, 3= “not sure”, 4= “agree” and, 5= “strongly agree”). Table 1 contains descriptive statistics and t tests for ATBEQ items. AU students had significantly lower scores on questions 11, 12, 14, 16, 19 and 20. AU students exhibited higher levels business ethics awareness than OB

Table 1

Means, Standard Deviations and Significance Tests for

Attitudes Toward Business Ethics Questionnaire (ATBEQ) items

Organization

al Behavior

(N = 29)

Accounting

(N = 29)

ATBEQ Items Mean SD Mean SD t

1. The only moral of

business is making

money. 2.14 1.35 1.79 1.08 1.08

2. A person who is doing

well in business does not

have to worry about

money problems.

2.41 1.04 1.87 .98 1.63

3. Every business person

acts according to moral

principles, whether

he/she is aware of it or

not.

2.43 1.23 2.21 1.14 .70

4. Act according to the law,

and you can’t go wrong 2.32 1.23 1.93 .92 1.46


morally.

5. Business decisions

involve a realistic

economic attitude and

not a moral philosophy.

2.71 1.15 2.24 1.05 1.61

6. Moral values are

irrelevant to the business

world. 1.71 .81 1.52 .73 .96

7. The lack of public

confidence in the ethics

of business people is not

justified.

2.68 .86 2.48 .94 .81

8. “Business ethics” is a

concept for public

relations only. 2.00 .90 1.72 .79 1.22

9. The business world today

is not different from what

it used to be in the past.

There is nothing new

under the sun.

1.74 .76 2.00 1.03 -

1.06

10. Competitiveness and

profitability are

independent values

(existing on their own).

2.86 1.20 2.45 .98 1.40

11. Conditions of a free

economy will serve best

the needs of society.

Limiting competition can

only hurt society and

actually violates basic

natural laws.

3.36 1.20 2.45 1.21 2.92 **

12. As a consumer when

making a car insurance 3.46 1.17 2.52 1.15 3.07 **


claim, I try to get as

much as possible

regardless of the extent

of the damage.

13. As an employee, I take

office supplies home; it

doesn’t hurt anyone. 2.25 1.26 1.76 .73 1.79

14. I view sick days as

vacation days that I

deserve. 2.86 1.26 2.07 .99 2.61 **

15. Employee wages should

be determined according

to the laws of supply and

demand.

2.79 1.10 2.72 .92 .22

16. For every decision in

business the only

question I ask is, “Will it

be profitable?” If yes- I

will act according; if not,

it is irrelevant and a

waste of time.

3.11 1.19 2.00 .84 4.04 ***

17. In my grocery store

every week I raise the

price of a certain product

and mark it “on sale.”

There is nothing wrong

with doing this.

2.00 1.18 1.69 .66 1.22

18. A good business person

is a successful business

person. 3.18 1.18 2.69 1.07 1.63

19. True morality is first

and foremost self-

interested. 2.86 1.11 2.21 .94 2.38 **


20. Self-sacrifice is

immoral. 2.71 1.18 2.10 .72 2.36 **

21. You can judge a person

according to his work

and his dedication. 3.61 1.06 3.41 .90 .73

22. You should not

consume more than you

produce. 3.32 1.05 3.00 .96 1.20

*** (p < .01)

** (p < .05)

students. AU students also had significantly lower scores on questions 12, 14, 16 and 20 which deal with ethical courses of action, indicting higher levels of personal ethical behavior. Hypothesis one is therefore supported. A factor analysis was conducted to ascertain the underlying factor of the ATBEQ, and determine if the AU and OB students differed with respect to these factors. The principle components factor matrix with eigenvalues greater than or equal to 1 were rotated using the varimax rotation procedure (Rummel, 1970). In order to facilitate independence of factors and interpretability, variables with cross loadings greater than .30 were removed. Table 2 contains the rotated factor matrix. Two factors resulted: “moral values” and “self serving interests”. The first factor “moral values” had highest loadings on questions 1, 5, and 6. The second factor “self-serving interests”


Table 2

Principal Component Factor Analysis

of ATBEQ Items1

Factor

Amoral

Values

Self

Serving

Interest

5. Business decisions involve a

realistic economic attitude and not

a moral philosophy. .84 .12

6. Moral values are irrelevant to the

business world .83 .08

1. The only moral of business is

making money. .62 .23

14. I view sick days as vacation

days that I deserve. .08 .91

13. As an employee, I take office

supplies home; it doesn't hurt

anyone.

.23 .86

had highest loadings on questions 13 and 14. The two-factor solution

accounted for 70% of the students’ responses variance. Factor scores

were calculated using the regression method whereby factor scores have

a mean of zero and variance equal to the squared multiple correlations

between the estimated and true factor scores (SPSS, 2007). Table 3

contrasts


Table 3

Means, Standard Deviations and

Significance Tests for ATBEQ Factors 1

Organizational

Behavior Accounting

M SD M SD t

Amoral

Values .15 1.06 -.15 .92 .90

Self

Serving

Interest

.29 1.17 -.28 .71 7.25 *

1 Factor scores are standardized

* p < .05

AU and OB students with respect to the amoral values and self serving interest factor scores. AU students exhibited significantly lower on the self-serving interest factor (t = 7.25, p < .05). AU and OB students did not differ with respect to the amoral factor.

CONCLUSION The more ethical attitudes towards business ethics reported by accounting students compared to OB students may have resulted from the Accounting students’ exposure to ethics training. The results are consistent with Armstrong (1993b) who finds support for her “sandwich approach” for teaching ethics that resulted in higher levels of moral development. Armstrong’s (1993b) “sandwich approach” suggests that


students take general ethics courses and these ethical principles be reinforced in accounting courses with ethics teaching interventions to help them identify moral dilemmas and resolve them with good ethical reasoning. The current study adds a new dimension to the existing literature in ethics education of students by using the ATBEQ. A limitation of the current study is the non-random sample selection of students to the experimental and control conditions (posttest only experimental design).

Further research in the area should focus on improving ethical awareness and moral development in students using a variety of teaching interventions, such as videos, debates, and case studies. Class room conditions must be conducive to activities that highlight higher professional achievement with integrity and focus on the need to protect the public who rely on the accountant/auditor for reliable and relevant financial information.

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About the Authors

Hema Rao is an Associate Professor of Accounting in the School of

Business at the State University of New York at Oswego. She teaches

courses in Accounting and Auditing. Email: [email protected]

Barry A. Friedman is an Associate Professor of Management in the

School of Business at State University of New York at Oswego. He

teaches courses in Human Resource Management and organizational

behavior, teaches internationally in Singapore and Japan, and comes to

academia with over 25 years of organizational experience with Xerox

and ExxonMobil. Email: [email protected]

Pamela L. Cox is a Professor of Management in the School of Business

at State University of New York at Oswego. She teaches courses in

International Business and Business Ethics. Email:

[email protected]

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